The average rent just in Manhattan hit an all-time high at a staggering $5,651 per month in October - up 9.4% year-over-year. Meanwhile, rental inventory is down 6.9% from last year. It is not determined if those rents are for studio/one/two bdrm apts. In Manhattan, inventory is down for the 19th consecutive month.
“Salaries are not rising as fast as rents are,” Miller said. “At some point the affordability becomes completely unmanageable for most residents. We’re not there yet and I suspect we’re probably a few years away from that. But that’s the trajectory at the moment.”
Against this backdrop, Mamdani surged in the polls. He promised to freeze rents in roughly a million stabilized apartments and borrow $70 billion to build 200,000 permanently affordable units over the next decade.
Where have you heard this before? It's not altruism - it's communism in it's simplest form. The Government has no place in building housing. Whenever and wherever they try to do it, it becomes a quagmire of crime, corruption and illegal activities, both before and after the fact.
Oh - and if he freezes the rents, how will the landlords respond? They'll leave vacant apartments vacant rather than rent them at a loss. Juss' so ya know...
Sounds like a return to The Projects....
ReplyDeleteCabrini Green should have been a warning, not a guide.
ReplyDeleteyou have rent controlled apartments i believe that are handed down generation to generation. you know, 3 bedroom 2 bath apartments for 1200 a month.
ReplyDeleteMany decades ago, I worked for a prominent Methodist Church in Baltimore doing community outreach. The church had a very active food co-op for the members and a small food bank for the community. No political "organizing" or that sort of crap for us; just real, on the streets practical stuff.
ReplyDeleteOne day the pastor asked me to deliver a few bags of food to a family in one of the local high-rise ghettos. I was fearless... I took the bags, hopped into my car and off I went. Now, this particular building had windows that barely opened, chain link fencing on the open walkways above the street, and a rep for things like refrigerators falling onto cop cars parked on the street, and the like. I was fearless...
When I got there in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, the place was teeming with residents just milling around, smoking, watch tv in the common areas, generally doing nothing valuable. When I walked in, a long-haired late-20s white boy, I was a tennis ball floating in a dark sea. And that sea noticed. Things got quiet; folks had no idea why I was there. I went to the guard station, all enclosed with thick plexiglass, and asked how to get to the family. The guard gave me the "Are you out of your f**king mind, boy?" look and told me how to get up the elevator and up to the apartment*. I went up the urine smelling, dirty, nasty elevator, to the family's door, and knocked. A young girl cracked the door looking out with suspicion and a bit of fear. I introduced myself, showed her the food bags and asked if this was the Such and Such family. Ah, blessed relief in her eyes. She opened the door wide, called her mom and dad and invited me in. Man, hugs all around, a very grateful family, and a very nice time followed. The dad had had prostate surgery and could not work, nor could he lay down to sleep. Someone built a sleeping board for him, a wide board with a padded cylindrical saddle they leaned against the mantel so he could rest. The mantel held a dozen or more athletic trophies the kids had won for football and cheerleading. Gracious and nice folks.
(continued)
Time to go, I took my leave and went down to the first floor, smiled at folks, thanked the guard, who still looked dubiously at me, and went back to work.
ReplyDeleteLessons: this is not "affordable" housing, it is subsidized, and the result is people who have shelter taken care of but most of whom take being cared for as a given. Not the family I went to see, but most everyone else in the common areas. Good folks fall on hard times and human decency says to help. Diminished people rely on others, and those others will prey on them as surely as a vampire in order to get power and influence. From my job at the church, I met the high and mighty of the city and the down and out. Most memorably, I met the great who had either been brought low or who chose to be humble and serving. Good life lessons.
*All these years later it occurs to me that my being able to walk unmolested through what could very well have been a hostile crowd may be the same sort of dynamic that Lt. Spears had running through German lines in the middle of the battle for Foy, twice, in Band of Brothers. Everyone was so taken aback and incredulous that someone who was not supposed to be there was that they were mesmerized into non-action. Maybe. I am glad, if so.
I hope the people of NYC get everything they voted for, good and hard to serve as an example for the rest of the country.
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